


How The Story Ends

by Severina



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Community: 10_fics, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-08
Updated: 2016-02-08
Packaged: 2018-05-18 23:23:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,496
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5947228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Severina/pseuds/Severina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The rescue mission at the hospital is on, and Daryl is alternately blessed and plagued by visions of his reunion with Beth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How The Story Ends

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate version for the ending of "Coda" Episode 508. Written for LJ's 10_fics Table 3, for the prompt "vision". I have only watched "Coda" once and never intend to watch it again, so I'm sure my memory of the prisoner exchange is not completely accurate.
> 
> * * *

They crouch next to one of the wide warehouse windows, squinting in the sunlight as Noah sketches the interior of the hospital in the dust of the floor. 

"This is the stairwell we'll be using," he says, pointing to a series of thin lines etched in the dirt. "There's a couple of doors on either side, so we need at least one person to keep an eye on our backs to make sure nobody comes out and—"

"Tries to ambush us from behind," Rick finishes.

"Dawn and her group will probably come out from here," Noah continues, pointing to the square that represents the nurse's station. 

 

_Beth is wearing her yellow polo._

_It's a bit worse for wear; some blood on the sleeve, a ragged tear down the left side. He thinks she must have got them when these bastards found her – when they_ took _her from him – and he feels the rage boil up inside and taps it down with an effort. Can't go off half-cocked now, no matter how much he wants to slash that self-righteous look off Dawn's face._

_"One of mine for one of yours," Rick says._

_Carol comes forward first, limping, ragged gash on her cheek. He nods to her briefly and grips her arm as she passes, but he's only got eyes for Beth. She's standin' tall, her chin up, and the rush of pride he feels nearly takes his breath away._

_"Now Beth," Rick says._

_She steps forward. His heart stops, just waiting for something to go wrong, but she takes one step and then another and then she is there, on their side of the corridor. Back where she belongs._

_He takes her in his arms and just holds her. Dawn keeps talkin' and Rick's answering her but none of that matters, 'cause he's got Beth tight against his chest, breathin' in the sweet scent of her skin and he's not lettin' go._

 

"Daryl? You with us?"

Daryl shakes his head, pushes the mental image aside with an effort. He could almost feel her in his arms. So close. 

"Yeah," he says. He blinks down at the rudimentary map on the floor. "Let's do this."

* * *

They stop in the stairwell just before the last turn. One of the cops is breathing heavy, almost hyperventilating. Scared shitless. Daryl sneers and turns away. This is the piece of shit that was supposed to keep people safe, this sniveling bastard who's shaking in his damn boots.

He leans against the railing and stares up at the closed door. One more set of stairs. One more turn and then—

 

_She's wearing her grey sweater over the yellow polo._

_Her face is pale but she looks determined, stares straight ahead with her chin up and her shoulders back. She stands behind Dawn and to the left, and it's not until she steps out from behind the crooked cop that he sees the cast on her wrist. Rage swells within in and he takes a ragged half-step forward before he manages to stop himself._

_"One of mine for one of yours," Rick says._

_One of the dirty cops pushes Carol forward. Carol in a wheelchair with a jagged cut on her chin and lookin' like death warmed over, and the wheels squeak and her breath is ragged and he don't know how in the hell they're gonna get her down the stairs. She gives him a wan smile as she passes and his eyes flick to hers briefly and something thick loosens in his chest to know she's safe, but then his eyes return to Beth._

_"Now Beth," Rick says._

_Her footsteps are steady and she meets his eyes and smiles at him. Two steps more and she'll be with him. One step._

_"Sorry," Dawn says. "Changed my mind."_

_Her hand is wrapped around Beth's bicep and the gun is at Beth's temple and Beth's eyes slip shut, resigned, just as the gun goes off._

 

"Man's a disgrace to the profession," Rick says.

Daryl starts, looks back to where Rick is pointing at the pale-faced bastard with the knocking knees. He nods once, jerkily, and something must show on his face because Rick squints at him in the low light of the stairwell.

"You okay?" Rick asks.

"Fine," Daryl rasps out. He can still hear the echo of the gunshot; still see the blood and bits of bone explode from the back of Beth's head, soaking her pony tail as her body goes limp. He swipes a hand over his eyes to clear the vision. "Fine," he says again.

* * *

The door creaks when they open it.

There's no need for stealth. They file in, and Dawn and her little fucking minions are there, and Beth—

Beth is wearing her grey sweater over her yellow polo. There is a dirty cast on her wrist and a determined look in her eyes, despite the ugly gashes on her cheek and her forehead. Daryl's fists his hands and breathes through his nose to stop himself from striding forward and taking them all out. Every last one of them who hurt her deserves to die.

"One of mine for one of yours," Rick says.

Carol thins her lips together in pain when they push her forward. The wheels on the chair don't squeak, and though she presses a hand to her side she manages to get up on her own. Her hand grips his forearm as she passes and a little bit of the weight is lifted from his chest.

"Now Beth," Rick says.

Rick goes out to meet her, wraps a single arm around her thin shoulders and draws her in. Daryl holds himself steady when they pass him, when Beth gives him the smallest saddest most tentative smile he's ever seen from her. _They_ took that from her. 

He glances over his shoulder at her in time to see her straighten her spine, and faces forward again in time to hear Dawn babbling. About wanting Noah. He hears Beth gasp, hears Noah agree to the lunacy, and then Beth is stepping forward—

 

_Beth is wearing her grey sweater over her yellow polo, and there is a dirty cast on her wrist, and concealed within the cast is a tiny pair of scissors._

_"I get it now," Beth says. She's pressed up as close to Dawn as she can get, refusing to back down. Dawn's gun is loose at her side._

_And then the scissors flash in the faint light._

_Dawn fires convulsively, and the bullet – somehow – the bullet rocks Beth's head back, and—_

 

"Fuck that," Daryl says.

The gun is in his hand before he even registers that he's pulled it; he's stepped in front of Beth and Noah before he even knows he's moved. He sees Dawn's fingers flick toward her own holstered weapon and gestures slightly with his own gun. "Don't even think about it."

"Noah belongs to us," Dawn says.

"Noah's his own damn person!" Daryl snaps. "These people ain't _wards_. They're _slaves!_ And it fucking ends now."

He senses the shuffling behind the cop but doesn't take his eyes off Dawn's face. He knows that Rick and Ty have drawn down behind him; knows that this whole thing might go pear-shaped any damn minute. His gun doesn't waver.

Dawn's eyes dart from Daryl's, her head inclining slightly as she talks to her people. "You can see these people are mentally unhinged."

He hears the slither of a weapon sliding from its holster, and still doesn't look away from Dawn's eyes.

"We never wanted to hurt anyone," one of the female cops says. "We tried to stop it."

"Shut up!" Dawn yells. 

"I'm putting my weapon down now," the woman says, and there's the dull clunk on the floor to follow the words. 

"Daryl's right," Rick says. "It's tough out there, but none of you have to stay here if you don't want to. You're welcome to come with us."

Dawn speaks again, and there's an exchange between Rick and the cops, and Daryl drowns all of it out. He focuses only on the centre of Dawn's forehead, and the tiny red hole he imagines blossoming there. 

And in the end, three of the "wards" and the woman cop step onto their side of the corridor. The old man starts to cry as soon as he gets past Rick; one of the men staggers, weak with what Daryl recognizes as dehydration. He leaves Ty and Carol to get the former prisoners started down the stairs, and the woman removes Dawn's gun from her holder, and Daryl still doesn't move. He could hold this damn position all fucking day.

"It's over, Daryl," Rick says from behind him. "Let's go."

He wants to kill her. Wants to see the bullet smash through her forehead, wants to watch her brains splatter onto the wall. Dawn sees the want in his eyes, and her body trembles; a thin line of sweat dampens the collar of her shirt.

"Daryl," Beth says softly. Her hand wraps around his bicep, not pulling him away but just… there. Her sweater scratches against his arm, and he knows if he looks at her she'll be watching him with those big blue eyes, unblinking, sure that he's going to make the right move. He remembers her covering a desecrated body with a blanket, and seeing beauty in the honouring of the dead, and putting pen to paper to inscribe a thank you note to a stranger. 

He doesn't want to be the cause of any more pain in her world. There's been enough of that already.

He lowers the gun.

* * *

"Don't look like we're being followed," Noah says.

They've already stopped twice. Once so Carol could rest, though the stubborn-ass woman insisted she was fine, and once so Daryl could get some water into the emaciated ward. The dude _also_ insisted her was fine and Rick might've plunged on and taken the man's word, but Daryl recognizes the signs and gives up his share of the water and makes them rest for fifteen minutes in the shade off the side of the road until the guy stops looking like he's going to pass out.

Daryl looks over his shoulder now at Noah, hustling to catch up with them on the deer trail. "Yeah well, if you don't pick up the damn pace we ain't gonna find shelter 'fore sundown," he barks out.

Noah just shakes his head. "You're just like Beth said you'd be," he says.

"How's that, ornery as shit?"

"Good," Noah says after a while. "You're a good man, Daryl."

Daryl scowls and fixes his sight on Beth, trudging next to Maggie ahead of him on the trail. He doesn't think Maggie has let go of her sister once since they were reunited outside the hospital, and he can't fault her for that. 

He squints against the fading sunlight, and puts one step in front of the other.

 

_Beth is wearing her grey sweater tied around her waist, and her yellow polo is dirt streaked and smudged with blood._

_She glances over her shoulder and smiles at him, squeezes Maggie around the waist before she leaves her sister's side to match his footsteps on the trail. She smiles at him, and it's soft and warm and full of promise, and the next thing he knows her arms are wrapped around his neck and her lips are close to his own. She smells like sweet berries and lemonade and freshly mown grass, and when his hand plunges into her hair it is as soft as spun silk._

_Her lips are soft too, and warm, and there is nothing better than the feel of her in his arms._

 

"Penny for your thoughts."

Daryl jerks, then scowls at being caught lollygagging when he should be watching out for walkers. "Thought you'd still be catchin' up with Maggie," he says.

"You mean my sister?" Beth asks. Her elbow catches him in the side playfully. "The one I'm never gonna see again?"

Daryl grunts. There was still summer heat when they had that argument, before a moonshine shack and a month of training on the bow and teaching Beth how to track and twisted ankles and pristine churches. Before dark cars and kidnappings and beating himself up seventeen times a day. "Already apologized for that."

"I know," she answers softly. 

For a while there is only the sound of the leaves beneath their feet, the muted whisper of Glenn's voice and Judith cooing on Carl's shoulder. Birdsong in the trees. 

"I knew you'd come for me," she says finally. He looks down to see her grinning up at him. "And if you didn't, I was going to come for you."

"Coulda got yourself killed," he grunts out. He _knows_ she's capable; knows she's not some shrinking flower that needs to be protected. But he remembers Noah's hushed voice describing the conditions in the hospital and the means of her attempted escape, and the words are out of his mouth before he can think twice about them.

"Nearly did," she says. "Would've been better than staying there."

His eyes dart to hers in time to see them darken, to see her wince, and he wonders what memories will be keeping her up tonight. He opens his mouth to ask and then closes it again. If she wants him to know, she'll tell him. And he'll just make sure that he takes second watch and stays up late by the fire, just in case. 

"But that didn't happen," she says, and he can see the effort it costs her to put the darkness away, to stuff it back down to where it can't hurt her right now. "And now we're together."

"Never figured we'd all manage to meet up again," Daryl says.

"No, Daryl," Beth murmurs. "Now _we're_ together."

He blinks, comes to a stuttering halt on the trail. Noah says something jokingly to him as he passes, and Abe claps him on the shoulder, and he doesn't hear any of it because Beth is looking up at him with those clear blue eyes that don't hide a thing. They're even more blue than he remembers, like a clear stream, and the sunlight turns her hair to spun gold, and the jagged gashes on her face are stark against her pale skin. She is the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. 

When she giggles he realizes that he's standing in the middle of the trail with his mouth hanging open, and yet he still can't manage to move or make a sound.

"Come on," she says. Her fingers twine with his, and after a couple of stumbling steps he gets his feet untangled and follows her lead. After a time she rests her head on his shoulder, and sometime after that his hand releases hers and winds its way around her waist. 

She's warm and safe in his arms, and he can't imagine anything better than this.


End file.
